On Chinese iPhones, Apple bans apps through the Dalai Lama, while hosting apps by the Chinese paramilitary group accused of arresting and abusing Uyghurs, an ethnic minority in China.
The company has also helped China spread its view of the world. Chinese iPhones censor the Taiwanese flag emoji, and their maps suggest that Taiwan is part of China. According to Patrick Wardle, a former National Security Agency hacker, simply typing the word “Taiwan” could cause the iPhone to crash for a while.
Sometimes, Mr. Schuhmacher said, he would be woken up in the middle of the night with requests from the Chinese government to remove an app. If the app seemed to mention the prohibited topics, it would remove it, but it would send more complicated cases to senior executives, including Mr Cue and Mr Schiller.
Apple defied an order from the Chinese government in 2012 to remove the Times’ apps. But five years later it ended up being that way. Mr Cook agreed to the decision, according to two knowledgeable people who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Apple recently announced the number of times governments require apps to be removed. In the two years ending June 2020, the latest data available, Apple approved 91 percent of the Chinese government’s app deactivation requests and removed 1,217 apps.
In every other country during that period, Apple approved 40 percent of requests and removed 253 apps. Apple said most of the apps that were removed for the Chinese government were related to gambling, pornography, or operated without a state license, such as: B. Rental services and live streaming apps.
However, a Times analysis of the Chinese app data suggests that this information represents a fraction of the apps that Apple has blocked in China. Since 2017, around 55,000 active apps have disappeared from Apple’s app store in China, according to a Times analysis of data compiled by Sensor Tower, an app data company. Most of these apps are available in other countries.
